Salon to ad-blockers: Can we use your browser to mine cryptocurrency?

Salon.com has a new, cryptocurrency-driven strategy for making money when readers block ads. If you want to read Salon without seeing ads, you can do so—as long as you let the website use your spare computing power to mine some coins.

If you visit Salon with an ad-blocker enabled, you might see a pop-up that asks you to disable the ad-blocker or “Block ads by allowing Salon to use your unused computing power.”

Salon explains what’s going on in a new FAQ. “How does Salon make money by using my processing power?” the FAQ says. “We intend to use a small percentage of your spare processing power to contribute to the advancement of technological discovery, evolution, and innovation. For our beta program, we’ll start by applying your processing power to help support the evolution and growth of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.”